During a metal cutting operation, any vibratory motion between a cutting tool and workpiece may lead to undesirable cutting performances such as poor workpiece surface finish and out-of-tolerance finished workpieces. Furthermore, such vibration may cause the cutting tool or the machine tool to become damaged.
To reduce these vibrations, the metal removal rate can be decreased. However, this approach interferes with production and only minimally reduces the amount of vibration.
Instead of decreasing metal removal rates, tuned boring bars have been manufactured using a heavy mass supported by rubber elements. The rubber elements are responsible for providing the stiffness and damping for the dynamic absorber system. Stiffness and damping are material specific properties. Therefore, it is impossible to design the dynamic absorber package to specified stiffness and damping parameters for optimum performance using rubber elements alone. Another method to introduce damping that has been employed is the addition of a viscous fluid in the dynamic absorber cavity within the boring bar shank. While this method does increase damping, the rubber elements and viscous fluid must be chosen carefully to ensure compatibility. Otherwise, the viscous fluid can deteriorate the rubber elements and alter the performance of the boring bar. Therefore, there is a need to provide a dynamic absorber that solves the above-mentioned problems.